Microsoft has just responded to Google's move regarding Exchange ActiveSync. Sadly, instead of addressing the very real problems consumers are about to face, Microsoft starts talking about switching to Outlook.com.

Except you didn't simply state "one of their IDEs", you make a generalisation about their entire product range.

That far fewer people use.

More people used ODF than OOXML, before the release of Office 2007. So your point is moot. MS had to switch to an open standard so they invented one that nobody used instead of switching to an established standard and the 2nd most popular format after the one they were forced into switching from.

Simply no, I haven't seen a need to use a lot of the "advanced features" other than CSS 3.0, and the browser should be allowed to fall back. If a web developer isn't using CSS 3.0 now and having appropriate fallbacks and polyfills ... they should be.

Except that IE8 didn't support CSS 3. So your whole defence about developers not having to work around IE8 is moot.

Out of the two competing browsers in the 90s it was IE which innovated.

Indeed, but you're talking two decades ago, and the moment MS killed Navigator, they gave up trying.

Plus MS only innovated because they were trying to drive Netscape out by making the web incompatible (though grated Netscape were doing the same - I have no sympathy for them either). That's not how open standards work.

It is a testament to how good IE6 was ahead of everything else that is can still render pages decently today if the page is built correctly. Every single BBC webpage I have tried renders from IE6 to Latest Chrome perfectly.

IE6 was garbage and once again, your attributing credit to a crappy browser when the real praise belongs to the web developers for writing IE6 hacks.

You talk almost as if you've never had to build a website in your life.

IE4 had a massive number of downloads considering the bandwidth commonly available at the time (which nobody ever mentions).

Nobody mentions because it's an irrelevant point. Ubuntu has had massive number of downloads and you likely consider that garbage.

IE7 and IE8 require almost no hacks to render a page the same as any of the modern browsers. Those that exist are well documented and easily avoided.

Maybe not if you're using popular web frameworks, but those frameworks will have IE7 hacks built into them.

Except that IE8 didn't support CSS 3. So your whole defence about developers not having to work around IE8 is moot.

No it is because you don't understand web development. There is a lot of articles that can talk about it better than I. The basic message is progressive enhancement, the idea is the web page scales to the user-agent.

Even if we go past that, if you are doing it properly you are doing feature detection and then using a polyfill. Whether IE has the feature or not becomes irrelevant because we have provided a work around.

People that are complaining the opposite as far as I am concerned need to grown a pair.

e.g. No rounded corners, we will present a decent UI with Square ones ... no CSS gradient we will use a CSS3PIE or whatever is appropriate.

Indeed, but you're talking two decades ago, and the moment MS killed Navigator, they gave up trying.

Plus MS only innovated because they were trying to drive Netscape out by making the web incompatible (though grated Netscape were doing the same - I have no sympathy for them either). That's not how open standards work.

The same argument has been used by others as to why IE had to innovate recently. Competition drives innovation ... up until IE6 there was decent competition in THAT ERA and recently it has happened again.

Not being funny, but this comes back to De-facto vs De-jure standards. -Webkit extensions have become de-facto on mobile.

IE6 was garbage and once again, your attributing credit to a crappy browser when the real praise belongs to the web developers for writing IE6 hacks.

You talk almost as if you've never had to build a website in your life.

Actually I have built quite a few websites and I have no problems with cross browser problems until it is something the browser can't do WITHOUT hacks. That is when I use IE specific stylesheets and I use them sparingly.

IE6 was never garbage when it came out. In fact it was built against a draft standard that was changed shortly after it's release.

I actually try understanding what the browser is doing before writing hacks and see if what I am doing is even a sensible markup before continuing.

A lot of IE6 problems are "hasLayout" based or double margin bug. If people actually bothered reading the documentation (RTFM), maybe we wouldn't have these discussions.

Nobody mentions because it's an irrelevant point. Ubuntu has had massive number of downloads and you likely consider that garbage.

Maybe now, but it proves that AT THE TIME people wanted IE better than Netscape when we were working on Dial-up.

No other browser had that number of downloads at the time (or any other piece of software).

Oh well.

Maybe not if you're using popular web frameworks, but those frameworks will have IE7 hacks built into them.

Bollox, I know how to program for a browser thanks and I don't need hacks.

I am sorry, but I am a competent web-dev. My English ain't the best but I know how to do develop a web page properly.

I've been building websites since 1994 and have used ASP (horrid), ASP.NET, PHP, CGI (in a variety of languages), mod_perl and JSP. I've built push sites since before it was AJAX, developed my own CMS, two different message boards, a HTML D&D game, and a HTML chat site (the latter two before HTML portals were common place).

I've written Java applets, ActiveX plugins (ewww), Flash plugins (yuk) and even developed an entire site in 3D back before it 3D accelerated graphics cards were affordable (if you were wondering, that was done in VRML 2.0).

I've also managed a plethora of web servers including (but not limited to) IIS, Apache and lighttpd on Windows, Linux (various distros), FreeBSD and Solaris.

Also, I've built a couple of different web scrapers, my own bespoke web browser and a chat bot for a 3rd party HTML chat site.

So don't tell me that I don't know what I'm talking about.

There is a lot of articles that can talk about it better than I. The basic message is progressive enhancement, the idea is the web page scales to the user-agent.

I know what you're crudely trying to describe, designing site so that non-compatible layers fall away elegantly (typically unsupported CSS tages). Yes it's the ideal way to build a side, but it's not always ideal to build a site like that. HTML5 is at a point where it can replace Flash, but to do so, you either have to write horrible hacks to support non-HTML5 browsers, fall back to Flash (yuk) or exclude those users entirely.

Plus even on my latest project where I've got a layout that supports such a concept, I'm having to write a few IE hacks to work around a lack of PNG transparency on older versions of IE.

The same argument has been used by others as to why IE had to innovate recently.

IE hasn't innovated recently.
Well, aside the process separation for tabs. But 1 new idea after 15 years of slumber is hardly an achievement.

Not being funny, but this comes back to De-facto vs De-jure standards. -Webkit extensions have become de-facto on mobile.

Well I was never disagreeing with that. Only the BS you posted about IE.

Actually I have built quite a few websites and I have no problems with cross browser problems until it is something the browser can't do WITHOUT hacks. That is when I use IE specific stylesheets and I use them sparingly.

I'd wager you use hack far more than you're letting on. Whether it's the framework handling the hacks for you (eg jQuery) or a subtle bit of conditional style, it's pretty much a requirement if you want to develop anything worth visiting. (even my current project, a site designed to elegantly fail for early browsers and has been tested against the likes of Lynx (command line browser), needs a conditional for IE 7 and below. Not even Lynx needed that.

IE6 was never garbage when it came out. In fact it was built against a draft standard that was changed shortly after it's release.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on that one.

I actually try understanding what the browser is doing before writing hacks and see if what I am doing is even a sensible markup before continuing.

I should hope so. That's why it's called "programming" rather than "blindly whacking the keyboard until something outputs".

Maybe now, but it proves that AT THE TIME people wanted IE better than Netscape when we were working on Dial-up.

Comparing one turd to another turd doesn't make the original turn any less shit.

However I love how you keep reverting back to tails from 2 decades ago to prove how relevant IE is today. :p

Bollox, I know how to program for a browser thanks and I don't need hacks.

I am sorry, but I am a competent web-dev. My English ain't the best but I know how to do develop a web page properly.

And "properly" often means having to server browser specific code. You do realise that the likes of jQuery has browser specific code in? Ever use jQuery? How about any of the other popular frameworks?